PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ PERCEPTION ON THE USE OF

STORYBOOK READING IN ENHANCING EFL STUDENTS’

VOCABULARY

Muhammad Ghozali Abdillah, Nayla Ridha, Hasnah Angreiny

muhghozali59@gmail.com, naylaridha11@gmail.com, hasnahangreiny02@gmail.com

State Islamic University of North Sumatera

Abstract: vocabulary is one component of the main factor in mastering a language. Enhancing

EFL students vocabulary can use of storybook. This study aims to find out the adventages and

disadventages of using storybook in improve the vocabulary of EFL students. The method that

used is a qualitative apporoach with a narrative inquiry two stages included which are

observation and interview session . The finding shows that adventages and disadventages using

storybook to improve vocabulary of EFL students.

Keyword: Reading, Storybook, Vocabulary

INTRODUCTION

Language learning cannot escape the goal of being able to communicate

verbally and in writing. communication can be formed through a word into a

sentence that contains information, while a collection or series of words in a

language is called vocabulary. Vocabulary is one component of the main factor

in mastering a language that can determine how well EFL can speak, listen and

write, imagine if humans do not have sufficient vocabulary, it is difficult for

them to express their thoughts and desires. so that vocabulary mastery in

language learning cannot be avoided for the sake of the realization of language

goals in forming good communication skills. Therefore knowledge of

vocabulary has been instilled from an early age in school or elementary school
However, the fact in the field is still many children, students from various

levels not only elementary school but also in junior high school and high school

education who are not able to speak English well because of low vocabulary

mastery. Making students able to master English is not an easy thing if it is not

balanced by a good teaching system. So to master vocabulary for EFL, teachers

and also prospective teachers as learning mediators need to find the right

learning method to make it easier for students in mastering vocabulary.

One method that can improve students' vocabulary skills is the learning

method using storybooks as learning media. This method is applied by EFL

reading storybooks using L2. According to Abdullah ( 2020) reading to children

helps their language, how to speak, expands vocabulary, and teaches how to

pronounce new words. According to Tampubolon (in Suci, 2020:3) Storybook

not only increases students' interest in reading but also develops their language

and thoughts.

This storybook method has been widely applied by English teachers in

Indonesia, as evidenced by many research studies regarding the use of this

storybook method as well as in increasing vocabulary, and from several studies,

it is known that the application of this method has a good impact on EFL

vocabulary mastery. One of the studies is a research conducted by Okyay &

Kandir (2021) entitled "The impact of the interactive storybook reading program

on scientific vocabulary acquisition by children". This type of research is a

quantitative study that aims to investigate the effect of storybook reading

methods. Interactions on the Mastery of Science Vocabulary for Preschool

Children in the Age Group 48-72 Months. The results showed that the children
in the experimental group mastered scientific vocabulary significantly better

than the children in the control group.

Asni (2018) in their research entitled "Development of the student's vocabulary

based on storybooks" Its purpose is to describe the effectiveness of SD Negeri

112279 Aekkanopan's storybook-based vocabulary development results for 5th

graders, Kualuh Hulu District, North Labuhanbatu Regency. carried out using

research and development methods and From the results of the study, it can be

concluded that the storybook is suitable for the vocabulary development of the

5th-grade students of Aekkanopan Primary School 112279, Kualuh Hulu

District, North District, Labuan Batu, and the effectiveness of the vocabulary

development results on the foundation of the storybook, during the

development process Fair in the category before, rising to good in the students

after the development process.

van den Berg & Klapwijk (2020) with the title "The Impact of Second-Language

Storybook Reading on the Vocabulary Acquisition of Grade 1 Learners"

purpose of this study was to examine the effects of combining picture book

methods with explicit and interactive teaching approaches on vocabulary

acquisition. This is quantitative research using pre-and post-test, pre-test

reading storybooks for 30 minutes and post-test reading sessions accompanied

by interactive vocabulary instructions. This study involved 69 English language

learners in grade 1 aged 5-10 years. The result shows that reading storybooks in

a second language with explicit and interactive vocabulary lessons has been

shown to have a positive impact on vocabulary acquisition in first graders.

Maynard et al.,(2010) entitled “teaching vocabulary to first-grade students

through repeated shared storybook reading: a comparison of rich and basic

instruction to incidential exposure” its porpuse to Evaluate the effectiveness of

ancillary rich and basic instructions Repeatedly reading a picture book with a

first-year student to expose the target phrase. Participants were 224 of her

freshmen who were randomly assigned to the condition. Three elementary

school classrooms with many students with reading and writing difficulties. In

all three conditions, a large number of picture books were instructed. The

intervention he does three times a week for 20-30 minute sessions. that's what

the results showed Abundant instruction outperformed both basic and

occasional exposure on all instructed scales. These results were maintained at

the delayed posttest he was 3 weeks after the test was completed. intervention.

Entailment is discussed in terms of a three-step approach to vocabulary

instruction.

Requa (2017) entitled "Vocabulary Development through Shared Storybook

Reading with Preschool Parents" The purpose of this study was to examine the

effectiveness of interventions designed to educate parents' Vocabulary Learning

Strategies for Reading Storybooks to Preschool Children. Differences between

groups of children whose parents were involved in the intervention (treatment

group) and children whose parents were not involved in the intervention

(comparison group) were tested. The results show that the method of sharing

storybooks with preschool parents is effective in improving students'

vocabulary skills.

Based on the description above, we as writers aim to examine the use of

storybook reading in improving students' vocabulary mastery, but this research

is different from previous research, which focuses more on the impact

storybook reading based on the application to the students However, in this

study the researcher tried to review the perspective of the pre-service teacher as

the person who presented the storybook reading method to the storybook

reading method in improving vocabulary mastery.

METHODOLOGY

The researcher generated data through 40 final year pre-service teaching that

had been in teaching practice. For examining pre-service teachers’ perception

towards the use of storybook reading in order to improve EFL students’

vocabulary, the study involved a qualitative approach with a narrative inquiry

as well as two stages included. To conduct the first stage, this study carried out

an observation for nearly a month by monitoring the pre-service teachers’

performance as they teach the EFL students in classes. The EFL students was

handed the same storybooks by the pre-service teachers, they will be listening

to the stories that is being conveyed by the teachers while pay attention to their

storybook. The next stage presents the analysis and the interpretation of pre-

service which carried out by having interview sessions with several questions

according to the topic of the use storybook reading. The study used random

sampling to be a way of selecting the sample. This technique resonates strongly

with the sampling because it permitted the researcher to choose the amount of

needed interviewees without being biased. To do so, this study taking

randomly ten selected participants out of 4th-year students. Participants are

categorized by alphabetical orders for anonymous sake. For data anaylisis, this

study is using Thematic Anaylis (TA). TA will aid the researcher to identify,

analyse patterns, and harmonize of the data generated. Thus, this TA helped the

researcher analyse data based on the themes and sub-themes (Barzani, 2020)

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

A. Advantage of Storybook Reading

In improving students' vocabulary, teachers are required to innovate in the

learning process. Namely one of them is the use of appropriate learning

methods. Therefore, pre-service teachers in their teaching practice can train

themselves in learning as well as find effective strategies in teaching students

according to their field of work. In this case, the researcher intends to ask

questions such as, why did you choose storybook reading as a learning model

out of many strategies? It was found that storybook reading is able to increase

students' vocabulary due to the emergence of students' interest in reading the

contents of the storybook. The following are the results of interviews that prove

this.

Participant B: “yes..it's true I applied this storybook method in improving the

vocabulary mastery of grade 7 and grade 9 students because the school also facilitates

English storybooks that are freely borrowed by students in the library, and I think this

method is a pretty good method to be applied in improving skills. vocabulary of students

at school where I have applied this method for 4 meetings, so the way I do it they read a

book and then if there is a vocabulary they don't know I am instructed to write it down

in the book in the form of a list and look for the meaning of the unknown vocabulary.

The impact that I see on the vocabulary mastery of the students I teach is quite

significant, their vocabulary knowledge is more developed than before this method was

applied. Besides that, in addition to improving vocabulary mastery, this method

improves children's storytelling skills, based on what I have noticed in terms of

retelling what they have learned. Jombang et al., n.d.(2016) “The storybook reading

method can improve students' storytelling skills”.

Participant H: The school I am doing is practical, some students tend to be able to easily

memorize vocabulary through our storybook reading. Incidentally at that time we

learned about family tree and previously had done storybook reading about family and

it really helped them.

Participant F: I found students who tend to get bored quickly when studying, when we

apply storybook reading, they are very enthusiastic about the readings they read and

what they like apart from the story is listening to what I talk about.

From the conversation above, pre-service teachers consider that storybook

reading has a positive impact on the development of students' vocabulary. It is

clear that when the teacher tells a story, the students pay close attention to what

they are listening to, then curiosity arises about the meaning of the vocabulary

in the story told by the teacher. These participants further claimed that as a

result of increasing students' vocabulary, they were able to master the whole

core of the story so that they were able to retell the contents of the story with

their classmates. Not only that, based on interviews with participant H,

students were able to apply the vocabulary they had learned in other English

subject matter. Apart from that, students who love listening than reading are

able to focus on the learning so that it doesn't bother them to read the

storybook.

B. Disavantage of Storybook Reading

Again, a teaching strategy is not intended for one student, but all students. In

other words, every method used in learning must have its own shortcomings.

Therefore, apart from the positive perception above, in this study the researcher

also found that there was a shortage of storybook reading conducted by pre-

service teachers in their teaching practice process. The difference in educational

background as well as the lack of conduciveness and interest in reading and the

lack of curiosity in the class make this method difficult to implement. To

encourage support for the above, the following statements are provided by

participants.

Participant G: “The storybook method has a good impact on students' vocabulary

mastery while I teach, but it only applies to children who have an interest in reading

and deep curiosity, for students who have low interest in reading and their curiosity to

know words. what he doesn't know, compared to students who don't have more

curiosity, they only read the text of the book without wanting to know what the

contents of the book they are reading will be. It will require attention and less time for

this storybook reading to have an impact. on vocabulary mastery.

Participant D: Some students did not behave well and were also unable to cooperate in

the learning process. When the lesson requires them to read but what students do is the

opposite. Some of them laughed while listening to the story and also did other things

while I was busy explaining.

Participant C: I once explained the meaning of a vocabulary but they didn't respond at

all when I confirmed if they had any questions.

Participant I: The storybook provided by the school usually uses words that are very

standard and are not familiar to the students so that they get bored quickly.

For the context of the shortcomings of storybook reading, it refers to the

materials and attitudes of students. From the first response to the third response

that participants state, it is clear that some students also experienced a decline

or had no interest in reading at all. They also in some cases do not have

curiosity and are less active in the classroom. Otherwise, they take actions

outside of what is needed during learning such as noisy, laughing, in which it

can disrupt the teaching and learning process in the classroom and ultimately

the learning carried out does not run optimally. Participant C further stated that

the books provided in the use of storybook reading also affect students'
attitudes in class. Those who do not understand and are bored and ultimately

do not pay attention to the learning process.

CONCLUSION

From the explanation above it can be concluded that The use of storybooks in

improving the vocabulary of EFL students has its own advantages and

disadvantages. In terms of the advantages of using an storybook, it really helps

increase students' vocabulary because when the teacher reads the storybook

students listen carefully and it comes to students' minds to find out the

meaning of the vocabulary in the storybook so that indirectly students will add

to the vocabulary they have when the student is curious. to the story told by the

teacher.

while the lack of using storybooks to increase the vocabulary of EFL students is

that not all students have high reading interest and curiosity so that when the

teacher reads the storybook the student is indifferent to it or even the student

will be noisy because of the lack of interest. Limitation of this research is the

researcher measuring the extent to which the use of storybooks is able to

improve the vocabulary of EFL students and the future researcher suggetion for

further researcher who want to examine similar titles to further detail the extent

to which the use of storybooks in improving the vocabulary of EFL students.

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